Carlos Javier Ortiz


Carlos Javier Ortiz is an American director, cinematographer and photographer.
Ortiz works with photography, experimental documentary films and text, projection projects and specializes in long-term documentaries that focus on urban life, gun violence, race, poverty and marginalized communities. Ortiz collaborates with his subjects by asking them to share their personal narratives and testimonials. His projects are collected and published and is exhibited internationally in galleries and museums.
His work is in collections including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York and the Library of Congress in D.C.. His work has appeared in: The Atlantic, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Time, NPR, The Guardian, and Stern.
He was a staff photographer for "Chicago In The Year 2000", a yearlong project. In 2016 his film We All We Got won best documentary short at the 2016 Crested Butte Film Festival.

Life and work

He lives between Chicago and Oakland, California. Oritz is an adjunct lecturer at UC Berkeley and is represented by Jenkins Johnson Gallery,.
Ortiz is working on a cross-cultural youth violence project, which documents adolescents in Chicago, and Guatemala. In 2011 he received the Open Society Institute Audience Engagement Grant.

Awards

  • 2006 The Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant
  • 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights: Photography Award
  • 2011 The Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant
  • 2011 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Arts & Culture
  • 2011 Open Society Foundation Audience Engagement Grant
  • 2012 The California Endowment Fellowship
  • 2013 Artist Fellowship Illinois Arts Council
  • 2013 Pulitzer Center Grant
  • 2015 BMRC Fellow The University of Chicago

Publications

  • We All We Got. New York, NY: Red Hook Editions, 2014..

Collections

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions